As spring turns to summer, it is time to shift to lighter and more refreshing foods. Tea cuisine is hardly a new idea, but its a great way of beating the heat.
The dozen or so green tea dishes offered at Cha For Tea are ideal. Various research projects have indicated that green tea -- unfermented and only lightly baked -- can enhance immunity and is rich in Vitamin C. Green tea is even being touted by some as a way of protecting against the SARS virus.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
The Cha For Tea chain has been around for three years now, a branch of Ten Ren's Tea Group (天仁茶業). It is a combination of tea house and restaurant, offering quality Chinese tea and tea-related cuisine. Since it opened, Cha For Tea has quietly expanded into an international chain with 10 stores around the world including Los Angeles, Sydney and Nagoya.
Green tea won tun noodles (
Pi-lo-chun steamed dumplings (
For meat eaters, a number of low calorie, refreshing dishes are also available. Spring tea steamed pork with orange (
For dessert, Cha For Tea has a range of dishes that have established themselves as popular favorites. The iced osmanthus lungjing tea (冰釀桂花龍井) is a cooling dessert ideal for hot days, a mixture of tea, osmanthus honey paste, Chinese red dates and tea leaves.
For mango pudding lovers, there are four choices, and even a mango-flavored yogurt. So when the weather gets too much for your appetite, a visit to Cha For Tea might be just the thing to tempt your taste buds.
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
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